It Can Do That?

Unlock All Your Phone's Secrets with Drippler

Did you know you can use the volume button as a shutter on your iPhone camera? Or change the keyboard layout on your Android?   We didn't either. In fact, there's a million cool Easter egg features in your phone you've yet to discover – and Drippler is your treasure map to locate them.   Upon installation, Drippler does a full analysis to determine the make, model, and software version of your device. From there, it culls the Web for articles containing tips and tricks specific to the phone in your hand.   Each day, you get pushed one "drip" – a handpicked piece of content that Drippler's creators think is most compelling, like how to use your iPhone as a webcam or change the typeface on your Android. Pretty cool. You can also browse the app (available for iPhone and Android) for archived content, most popular tips, and a selection of recommended apps.   Now go enjoy your riches.

Google Play now available on Barnes & Noble's Nook tablets

Barnes & Noble Inc aims to make its "Nook" tablets more appealing to consumers by offering buyers access to Google Inc's apps store, hoping to generate interest in a device that has made little headway against Amazon.com Inc's Kindle and Apple Inc's iPad.

The top U.S. bookstore chain, trying to reverse a drop in sales last holiday season of its Nook devices, which include e-readers, announced it would add Google Play to its Nook HD and Nook HD+ devices as of Friday.

The move will bring the number of apps on the Nook HD and Nook HD+ tablets, which first came to market in November, to 750,000 from about 10,000, or roughly the same as the iPad, in an effort to remedy what the company recognizes is the Nook's Achilles heel: a limited selection of "apps" or software.

"This deal is about plugging that gap. Consumers told us they wanted more apps," Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch told Reuters.

Nook HD and Nook HD+ devices sold in stores as of Friday will already have Google Play installed. Existing customers will be able to download it at Nook's online store and via an automatic over-the-air update.

The tablets will also have Google services like Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, and the Chrome web browser.

"It's a positive product enhancement- adding the android features is a great step. It makes this device competitive," said Sarah Rotman Epps, a senior analyst with Forrester Research, who nonetheless said the move was not a game changer in the fight against large tech giants whose devices have more visibility.

Google Play is expanding its offering quickly: in the last year, it has rapidly closed the gap with Apple's market-dominating apps store in terms of sheer quantity, with both expected to hit 1 million soon.

The collaboration with Google comes as Barnes & Noble is seeking to reignite customer interest in its Nook, the core part of its Nook Media unit. The bookseller is considering spinning off the Nook Media unit and has already attracted investments from Microsoft Corp and Pearson LLC.

The Nook, launched in 2009 to compete with the Kindle, has been the cornerstone of Barnes & Noble's strategy to benefit from the shift by many readers to digital books.

The retailer sold fewer devices during the crucial holiday season, with revenue in the overall Nook business including content falling 12.6 percent.

Sushi for Peccaries?

It turns out the white-lipped peccary -- a piglike animal from Central and South America -- will settle for fish when fruits (its main food) are no longer on the menu, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society and partners revealing the first-ever photos of fish-eating peccaries.

These images of fish-eating white-lipped peccaries were taken on the morning of August 17, 2011. After a review of the scientific literature, the photographer and his colleagues realized that photographic evidence of this behavior was unprecedented. (Credit: Douglas Fernandes)

Source

New Zooming Technique for Entering Text Into Smartwatches

Technology blogs have been abuzz that smartwatches may soon be on their way from companies such as Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft. But as capable as these ultra-small computers may be, how will users enter an address, a name, or a search term into them? One solution is an iterative zooming technique developed and tested by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

Read More

A Text Message a Day Keeps the Asthma Attack Away

Simply sending children with asthma a text message each day asking about their symptoms and providing knowledge about their condition can lead to improved health outcomes.
Read More

Studying Meteorites May Reveal Mars' Secrets of Life

In an effort to determine if conditions were ever right on Mars to sustain life, a team of scientists, including a Michigan State University professor, has examined a meteorite that formed on the Red Planet more than a billion years ago.

And although this team's work is not specifically solving the mystery, it is laying the groundwork for future researchers to answer this age-old question.

The problem, said MSU geological sciences professor Michael Velbel, is that most meteorites that originated on Mars arrived on Earth so long ago that now they have characteristics that tell of their life on Earth, obscuring any clues it might offer about their time on Mars.

"These meteorites contain water-related mineral and chemical signatures that can signify habitable conditions," he said. "The trouble is by the time most of these meteorites have been lying around on Earth they pick up signatures that look just like habitable environments, because they are. Earth, obviously, is habitable.

"If we could somehow prove the signature on the meteorite was from before it came to Earth, that would be telling us about Mars."

Specifically, the team found mineral and chemical signatures on the rocks that indicated terrestrial weathering -- changes that took place on Earth. The identification of these types of changes will provide valuable clues as scientists continue to examine the meteorites.

"Our contribution is to provide additional depth and a little broader view than some work has done before in sorting out those two kinds of water-related alterations -- the ones that happened on Earth and the ones that happened on Mars," Velbel said.

The meteorite that Velbel and his colleagues examined -- known as a nakhlite meteorite -- was recovered in 2003 in the Miller Range of Antarctica. About the size of a tennis ball and weighing in at one-and-a-half pounds, the meteorite was one of hundreds recovered from that area.

Velbel said past examinations of meteorites that originated on Mars, as well as satellite and Rover data, prove water once existed on Mars, which is the fourth planet from the sun and Earth's nearest Solar System neighbor.

"However," he said, "until a Mars mission successfully returns samples from Mars, mineralogical studies of geochemical processes on Mars will continue to depend heavily on data from meteorites."

Velbel is currently serving as a senior fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C.

The research is published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, a bi-weekly journal co-sponsored by two professional societies, the Geochemical Society and the Meteoritical Society.

Source

10 Interesting Facts About Junk Food